Tag Archives: vanilla buttercream

Fall Flower Cupcake Bouquet

20 Friday Jan 2017

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I made this fall flower cupcake bouquet as a special gift for a friend to take to her grandmother’s 80th birthday.

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I loved working  with these fall colors. The cupcakes were an assortment of chocolate, vanilla, and red velvet flavors, all with vanilla buttercream.

I variegated the icing colors in the piping bags to make the flowers look more realistic and used 3 different Wilton piping tips to pipe the petals: #18 for the green hydrangeas; 1M for the red roses; and #81 for the yellow mums.

 

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Once the cupcakes were piped, I popped them into the fridge for a bit to firm up. I used wooden skewers and foam blocks to arrange them in the basket, then added green and orange tissue, silk leaves, and a few fronds to add height and interest (I made sure nothing “foreign” touched the icing…:0).

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Hope you had a great 80th birthday, Louise’s grandma!  

I really enjoyed making your cupcake arrangement!

Vintage Baseball Cake

17 Tuesday Jan 2017

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Another sports cake for a great kid!  I’ve made birthday cakes for this sweet boy for many years now.  They’re always sports-themed and just keep getting bigger and more fun!

Anthony’s mom asked for a 2-tiered vintage baseball-themed cake with a worn, vintage look.  The only way to really do that without an airbrush (which I don’t own….yet) was to cover it in fondant and creatively brush on the “dirt” using cocoa powder and a small brush (cocoa powder…who knew?  worked great!).

 

The base 9″ tier is a 2-layer chocolate cake with mocha filling and the 6″ tier is Italian cream cake with almond buttercream filling.

The cakes are iced with vanilla buttercream and then covered with homemade marshmallow fondant. The details are a combo of fondant, red edible pen (small stitching on baseball), and cocoa powder.

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Loved the simple, vintage, worn look of this cake and it was so fun to make…

Happy 14th birthday, Anthony!  Keep being a great kid!

Nautical-Themed Baby Shower Cake

06 Friday Jan 2017

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I did a bunch of baby shower cakes last year and I’m so behind on posting, I’m only now getting to them. I also had orders for lots and lots of nautical or ocean-themed cakes. Not sure if there were enough to qualify as a “trend,” but it seemed like a wave of them during the summer and fall months (no pun intended :0).

This cute baby shower cake was fun and used a number of different icing and fondant techniques, so I thought I’d share…

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The mom-to-be knew just what she wanted in terms of style, I just added a few tweaks of my own.

For the cake, the bottom tier is a 9″ round chocolate and the top is a 6″ round vanilla.  Both are filled and iced with vanilla-bean buttercream  The decorations and boat are made from homemade marshmallow fondant (except the red, I buy that because it is so hard to make large quantities).

The little sail boat is made from brown fondant with lots of tylose powder (to make it stiff); I used a woodgrain stamp on the sides to make the fondant look like wood.  The biggest trick was letting the sails dry long enough to stand up and stick to the skewer, which goes down into the top tier to hold the boat in place and keep everything together.

 

The baby boy was fun to make….There’s actually a cute little body under the blanket (wish I would have taken a picture).  I wanted the details on his little face to be subtle and soft, so I pressed them into the pliable fondant  with a needle tool and added a little dot of flesh-colored fondant for a nose. I drew his hair on with an edible marker…so cute.

The anchor and lifebuoys (that’s really what they’re called) are cut using cutters and the roping is 2 strands of fondant twisted together.

The bottom tier is iced with a rough surface to look like the water using a dark to light ombre technique.  The top tier is similar, just more smooth-iced.

This was a fun cake for an excited mom-to-be.  It was back in November, so I’m sure she’s a happy (and exhausted) mom by now.  Congrats, Maria!

Disney’s Frozen Elsa Doll Cake

26 Tuesday Jul 2016

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Doll cakes are making a comeback. Really.

I haven’t had a request for one in 4 years, but have made 3 in the past month… Crazy!  This most recent one was for a darling little girl who just turned 3.

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I remember my mom getting me a doll cake for my 5th (I think?) birthday. I’m pretty sure she didn’t make it and, when I laid eyes on it, I thought it was the most wonderful, glorious thing I’d ever seen  in my life (wish I had a picture).  It was covered in thick pink and purple icing and, up until that point, was the most treasured thing I’d ever received for a birthday (until I got my horse, Cactus, when I turned 10).

Because I raised such a fuss when it came time to cut (i.e., “destroy”) it, my dear mother only cut cake out of the back of the dress to preserve it as long as possible….I recall we kept it for waaayyyy too long (it got pretty stale so my mom eventually threw the uneaten cake away).

Of course this was all before the Disney princess craze, so it was just a regular old Barbie Doll, but I loved that Barbie forever…

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This was a 4-layer  vanilla cake (9″-8″-7″-6″ rounds) with blue vanilla-bean buttercream between the layers.  After carving, I iced on a thin crumb coat, inserted Elsa, and popped the entire cake into the fridge to firm up.

 

The blue rosettes (tinged with white) were piped on with a Wilton 1M tip and the ruffles around the bodice were piped with a 104 tip.  I added small snowflakes cut with my punch cutters and crystal sugar flakes to add the illusion of snow.

I also made a dozen chocolate cupcakes with blue rosettes and adorned each with a single fondant snowflake.

A fondant inscription was added to the cake board.

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So fun to make and brought back many happy memories of my own childhood.

 

Happy Birthday, Claire!  I so much enjoyed making your Elsa doll cake and cupcakes!

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Ursuline HS Softball Birthday Cake

21 Tuesday Jun 2016

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softball-birthday-cake-1I made this cake earlier this year for a sweet girl who is an up-and-coming softball star at a local high school.  Her mom wanted it to scream softball in the school’s colors of yellow and green.

The cake is a 10″ brown sugar cake with caramel filling, iced with vanilla buttercream.  I used some sports cutters and hand-cut other details from homemade marshmallow fondant.

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Hope you had a good birthday, Katherine!  I sure enjoyed making your cake!